


No Other Option

by katikat



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 20:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikat/pseuds/katikat
Summary: They have five hours and forty-one minutes to make a six hour drive. They can’t afford to stop. Jack’s POV. A what-if following the cold open set in Ankara in ep 104. (Unbeta'd)





	No Other Option

Thornton’s driving like a bat outta hell, cutting corners, overtaking other cars, twisting the steering wheel this way and that, trying to stay ahead of the Galata security forces - and now the Ankara police, too. And to her credit, she’s doing pretty well.

But when she cuts the next corner so sharply, tires screeching loud, that Jack has to brace himself against the van’s roof, he yells at her, “Yow, Niki Lauda! Don’t forget the guy on the roof!”

Because, yeah, Mac’s still up there, clinging to the roof of their car, sliding this way and that and trying not to fall off. Thornton can’t stop and let him in, though, not now, not yet, not when the enemy’s right on their tail.

So Thornton drives on and the streets are getting narrower and narrower, twistier and twistier, as they enter the old part of the town. Then finally, she turns into an alley so small they all unconsciously hold their breath in fear they will get stuck, but no, they’re out - less both rear-view mirrors, though - and free, their pursuit lost somewhere in the maze of the streets behind them.

And then they finally come to a halt, Thornton hitting the breaks - and Mac can’t hold on any longer. He slides down the windshield and the hood to drop hard to the cobblestones, leaving a thick, bright red smear behind all the way down.

_Blood._

They all just sit there for a moment and stare, then Jack mutters, “Jesus!” and scrambles out of the car and around it to where Mac’s still lying on the ground, barely moving. He stops for a second, taking in Mac’s blood-soaked camo, his pale face and ragged breath, his hands pressed tight against his lower right side… and the blood still seeping between his fingers.

“Jesus…” Jack whispers again and drops to his knees by Mac’s side, gently pulling Mac’s hands away and lifting his shirt and then t-shirt to check, to see where all the blood’s coming from.

“I think-I think I got shot,” Mac croaks out between gasps for breath.

“Ya think?” Jack snaps, not really angry, just scared. “What was your first clue?”

And sure enough, there’s a bullet hole in Mac’s side, a large one in the front, a smaller one in the back - clean shot, through and through. He was hit from behind, probably while running.  _Those bastards!_

There’s the screech of tires again and when Jack looks up, he sees Thornton behind the wheel of another vehicle, some beat-up car she stole while he was checking Mac’s wound. “We need to go,  _now_!” she calls through the rolled down window.

“I need to stop the bleeding first,” Jack replies. He takes off his shirt, and ripping it in half, he folds both pieces into a makeshift dressing. Then he pulls the belt out of Mac’s pants and looks up. “Riley, come here. I need you to hold this for me.”

Looking wide-eyed and not a little apprehensive, she crouches down on Mac’s other side, then she watches as Jack covers both bullet holes with the pieces of cloth, and when he nods at her, she takes over, holding them in place.

Jack slides the belt under Mac, cinches it in place over the dressing and then, looking down at Mac, he says softly, “This will hurt real bad, sorry.”

Mac blinks at him, then he swallows and nods, squeezing his eyes shut. And Jack pulls hard, tightening the belt to hold the dressing in place and to stop the wound from bleeding. Mac arches his back and cries out. His whole body turns taut for a second but then he relaxes, going boneless as he faints.

“Jack!” Thornton calls again, looking around nervously. “We need to go. Now!” she insists and the sirens growing louder and louder by the second prove her point.

“Coming, coming!” Jack assures her, and grabbing Mac’s arm, he sits him up, then he throws Mac’s limp body over his shoulder. With a grunt, Jack gets up and turns, nodding at Riley. “You, in the back.”

Riley does as she’s told. She opens the back door of the rusted old car and gets in, sliding across the cracked fake leather seat. The she turns back and reaches out and Jack gently, carefully lowers Mac down, into her arms, and helps her pull him inside. When Mac’s nestled against Riley as comfortably as possible, Jack checks one last time that the belt’s holding the dressing in place - it worries him that the fabric’s already turning red but he can’t do anything about it now - then he slams the door shut and runs around the car to get into the passenger seat.

“Go, go, go,” Jack yells as soon as he’s in and Thornton peels off, headed away from the oncoming sirens. 

Only when Jack braces himself against the dashboard does he realize his hands are covered with blood, Mac’s blood. And he shivers, feeling sick.

* * *

They leave Ankara, headed north. That doesn’t escape Jack.

“Uhm, Patty, Director Thornton, ma’am, why are we headed  _north_ when Exfil was to pick us up in the other direction?” Jack asks with a frown, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

Thornton checks the rear-view mirror, driving on. “Because they’re not coming, Jack,” she replies coolly.

“What?” Riley asks from the backseat while Jack exclaims, “Excuse me?”

“They have their orders,” Thornton explains. “If anything was to go pear-shaped, they were ordered to abandon their position. I’ll not risk exposing the agency!”

Jack just stares at her for a moment. Not that he doesn’t get her point, rationally, but Mac, bleeding heavily in the backseat, that’s anything but rational. Jack feels an overwhelming need to get Mac out of here, to get him help,  _nownownow,_  all this clandestine bullshit be damned!

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Riley asks and her voice sounds downright anxious now.

Jack glances at her over his shoulder and sees that she’s holding onto Mac, who’s still slumped against her, and there’s blood on her cheek from when she must’ve pushed her hair back, her hands are namely just as red-stained as Jack’s. And the makeshift dressing on Mac’s wound is soaked through.  _Dammit!_

“We’re going to head north, to our secondary location,” Thornton replies. “We have exactly” –she checks her watch– “five hours and forty-one minutes to get there.”

“And it’s how far,  _exactly_?” Jack asks with his eyebrows raised, suspecting he’s not going to like the answer.

Thornton pauses, staring hard at the sun-baked road in front of them. “It’s a six hour drive,” she admits finally. “We’ll be lucky if we make it.”

“No,” Jack says, shaking his head. “No, Patty. We need to stop and take care of Mac, what I did back there, that can’t even be called ‘field medicine’. Or-or we need to at least get supplies, something to clean the wound with or it might get infected!”

“If we miss the Exfil, we’re all dead, Jack!” Thornton cuts him off sharply.

Silence settles over the car for a moment as Jack glares at Thornton fiercely, then there’s a soft croak from the backseat. “I can make it, Jack. I’ll be fine.”

“Mac!” Riley exclaims, delighted. “You’re awake.”

Jack turns and sees Mac looking up at Riley, smiling a little. He’s pale, so pale, actually, that his lips look gray. When he tries to shift into a better position, Jack hears him hiss sharply in pain, and his hand trembles when he tries to wipe his mouth with the back of it.  _Fine, my ass!_

“You,” Jack states firmly, pointing at Mac, “are full of holes, Mr. Swiss Army Cheese. You don’t get to vote on this.”

“Nobody’s voting on anything, Dalton,” Thornton says. “There’s no other option. Either we make the rendezvous or we’re stuck here!” She glances at Mac in the rear-view mirror and this time, both her eyes and her voice soften. “I’m sorry, Mac,” she tells him. “But we  _have to_ make it there. We can’t afford  _any_ delay.”

Mac swallows, staring Jack in the eyes. “I get it,” he whispers. 

Well, Jack gets it, too, sure, but he doesn’t like, he downright hates this plan, to be honest. But since there’s nothing he can do about it, he goes back to staring through the windshield with his jaw clenched hard.

* * *

In the end, they do make a pit stop - a six hour ride is a six hour ride and their bodies have their needs - and Jack uses it to redress Mac’s wound. He’s glad to see that it stopped bleeding, it’s a relief. What’s less positive is Mac’s rising body temperature. They don’t have anything to clean the wound with - this old wreck doesn’t even have a first aid kit, dammit! - and infection already seems to have set it. No wonder in this heat.  _Double damn!_

This time, Jack lets Riley ride shotgun and sits in the back with Mac himself; Riley’s been incredibly patient and considerate but he did see the pained, stiff way in which she moved after getting out of the car - sitting cramped and twisted in the back to leave Mac as much room as possible, is no fun.

They drive on and the sun’s slowly starting to set, turning everything soft and orange. It would be a beautiful sight - if Jack didn’t feel the waves of heat that seem to roll off Mac as he leans against Jack, eyes half-closed, breath raspy. Jack rolls down the window to keep Mac as cool as possible but it’s just as hot outside as it is on the inside.

The silence in the car’s lulling them all to drowsiness despite their anxiety, but Jack knows he mustn’t let Mac fall asleep. And so he keeps asking him inane questions, making him recite Newton’s whatever law about whatever thing - “Is it the guy who got whacked by an apple?” - and Mac tries to indulge him, knowing full well what Jack’s trying to do - that’s the problem with geniuses. In the end, though, Mac falls silent, too tired, too parched, too…  _achy_.

So Jack tries himself, anything,  _anything_ to keep Mac awake. “Hey, and what about: ‘Anything that can go wrong  _will_ go wrong?’”

It takes a moment but then Mac chuckles softly. “That’s  _Murphy’s_ Law, Jack. You realize those laws aren’t actually  _laws_ laws, right?” he points out in a raspy voice.

“Say it aloud the next time your bread hits the floor buttered side down!” Jack responds.

And Mac laughs - only to groan in pain a second later, hands dropping to his wound. He tries to curl up in the backseat to relieve the pain but there’s simply not room enough. So Jack wraps his right arm around Mac’s chest, his left hand he rests against Mac’s forehead and he holds Mac tight against his shoulder as Mac rides out the pain, whimpering. And while Jack tries to keep his friend calm, he whispers to him, “Okay, it’s okay, it’ll pass, shh, it’ll pass, I promise, just a moment longer, shh…”

It does. It does pass and Mac slumps against him, breathless and trembling - and Jack’s heart skips a beat when he realizes that at some point, Mac stopped sweating. His forehead’s burning hot under Jack’s palm but it’s dry, there’s no sweat, nothing.  _Jesus…_

Jack squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his jaw, resting his head against Mac’s for a second. Then he gathers himself again and says quietly, “You’ll be alright, kid, you’ll see. You-you finally wrote to your dad, after all. I bet he was delighted to hear from you and he’ll respond soon, I know  _I_  would.”

There’s a soft huff. “My dad, my dad’s not like you, Jack.” A pause, then, “I wish my dad was more like you…”

That makes Jack’s heart ache. He opens his eyes - and sees Riley watching him. For once, she doesn’t have a cutting remark for him about his parenting skills. She just stares at him with unreadable eyes. Then she drops her look to Mac - and when Jack does, too, he sees that Mac fell unconscious again.

* * *

They drive on and on. The sun sets and night brings coolness with it which is a blessing in their situation. Nobody speaks anymore. They’re simply too tired, too exhausted. Thornton’s hands are clamped so hard around the steering wheel that her knuckles are white and Riley fell asleep in the passenger seat and Jack, Jack’s holding onto Mac… who hasn’t woken up again. Jack’s past worry now, he feels downright terrified now.

And then they finally reach the coordinates of the second Exfil - and they arrive ten minutes too late. The field where the chopper should’ve been waiting is dark and empty. It’s gone. They missed their pick-up.

Thornton hits the steering wheel with her fist, and then again and again, rattling it in impotent fury. She tried, she did her best and they arrived too late.

“What are we going to do now?” Riley asks in a low voice.

Jack has no idea, he really doesn’t. The three of them - Thornton, Riley and he - they’ll be alright, there’s always a way out of the country, especially this close to Europe. But Mac…

Suddenly, there’s a sound, almost too soft to be heard but it’s getting louder: the very familiar, very welcoming  _whoop-whoop-whoop_ of a chopper’s propeller. And then the dark outline of the helicopter pulls up from behind a hill, slowly coming their way.

And Jack laughs, hoisting Mac up, and even though Mac can’t really hear him, he tells him, “Looks like we aren’t the only ones who can’t follow orders, buddy. They waited. They shouldn’t have - but they  _waited_ for us. You’re going home, Mac. Everything’s going to be alright now, I promise…”

* * *

Jack has no idea where the chopper’s headed, all he knows is that they’re somewhere over Europe and that’s enough for him. He’s sitting on the floor by Mac’s side, as always, while one of the Exfil team members is taking care of Mac with a gloriously overstuffed first aid kit, cleaning his wound, attaching him to an IV… doing all the things that Mac needed done six hours ago. But better late than never.

“He’s going to be fine,” the man assures Jack when he notices Jack gripping Mac’s hand tight. It leaves him unfazed; as an Exfil, he’s used to scenes like that.

Jack just nods because his throat is too thick for him to speak and he’s fighting back tears of relief. Thornton and Riley are sitting in the back, watching him, but Jack doesn’t care what they think, if they call him overly emotional again or-or something else. Mac’s going to be alright and that’s all that matters to him.

And then he feels light pressure on his hand: Mac’s squeezing his hand back! 

When Jack looks down, he sees that Mac’s staring up at him with half-lidded eyes, bright with fever. He opens his mouth and licks his lips, apparently wanting to say something, so Jack scoots closer and bends down to better hear him over the roar of the engine.

“Told you… I would make it,” Mac whispers.

Jack just stares at him dumbly for a moment, then he grins wide, feeling happy and relieved and a little crazed, and croaks out, “Smartass.”


End file.
